"This can be used by women and elderly citizens to trigger alarms and also send signal to pre-identified phone numbers," Rajiv Gauba, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, said.

"We have roped in Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Thiruvananthapuram for this project," Gauba, who is associated with the e-governance group of the Ministry, said.

He was speaking at a conference on 'Secure Cities 2013' on how information technology is transforming the security architecture in India.

A ministry official said that the device would be a mobile-like gadget.

Gauba, however, added that the challenge lay in making the device affordable for everyone and then going for mass production.